


against the rules

by Yevynaea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Compliant, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Drabble, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 06:48:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20849246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yevynaea/pseuds/Yevynaea
Summary: She knows she’s different. She’s always been different. Different from her parents, different from other kids in school, before Hogwarts, different from other kids in school, at Hogwarts. She’s always been different. No place lets her forget this.(or: the faeblooded-hermione ficlet i wrote years ago and never rescued from tumblr until now)





	against the rules

**Author's Note:**

> posting this on ao3 bc i need a YA Lit fanfiction to share with my classmates & professor, and if anyone I have to see in everyday life saw my tumblr i might actually die, so.

She knows she’s different. She’s _always _been different. Different from her parents, different from other kids in school, before Hogwarts, different from other kids in school, at Hogwarts. She’s always been different. No place lets her forget this.

She knows that rules may not, should not, can not be broken, knows this by her parents’ warnings and teachers’ scoldings and plain instinct. But, here is the loophole: rules can be _bent_.

Harry and Ron don’t understand, when she first meets them, or really even years later. She bends the rules to her, _their_, advantage, because without her help her boys would break too many rules, get into too much trouble. Rules can always be bent, but to break them entirely is something else, something dangerous.

* * *

Some of the girls in her dorm take turns describing the feelings of magic to each other, one night, because they’re too awake to shut their eyes and too asleep to do anything but speak. Spells and hexes and curses and charms and fire-spark energy under skin, wrapped over bones, running through veins, it sounds largely the same for all of them. Hermione knows magic differently, knows it as gentle winds lifting her hair, sunlight on her skin, the echo of a life in her wand, like a heartbeat, as the river of her magic becomes the spark of a spell, spoken with just the right _feeling _to give it meaning.

* * *

“You’re very much like a changeling,” Luna says thoughtfully, when they are twenty and healing, and Luna is a friend in the way that means something closer to _family_. Hermione hums.

“Can changelings use wands?” She asks. Luna only shrugs. Hermione hums again, ties her curled hair back from her face, refocuses on the parchment in front of her.

* * *

“I love you,” she says to Ron, when they are eighteen and war-tested, and his freckled skin contrasts sharply against her own. The words aren’t simple statement, they’re magic, as true a spell as sparks or sunlight.

“I love you, too,” he says back, and she kisses him, claiming him the softest way she knows.

* * *

“I’m different, aren’t I,” Harry says, barely a question, when they are twelve and awake much later than they maybe should be. His magic is fire-spark energy under skin and gentle winds through hair and the quiet words of snakes.

“We’ll always be different from _someone_,” Hermione replies.

* * *

“Hermione, dear,” Molly Weasley says, hand to heart, when Hermione is barely fifteen, and their eyes meet in the dark of 12 Grimmauld Place’s kitchen at midnight. “You startled me.”

Molly is smiling, gentle, but they’re something curious and wary hidden behind her eyes. She won’t tell Hermione for years that when their eyes met through the shadows, Hermione’s had briefly shone bright, catlike and inscrutable.

* * *

She’s always been good at following the rules, and even better at bending them.

She comes up with plans and strategies, protects her boys and her friends and her family, destroys horcruxes and fights with every bit of magic in her blood.

She’s always been different, but it’s not like that’s ever been against the rules.


End file.
